In traditional pedagogy, ‘ownership’ is the term often used to refer to the way pupils
gradually take control of, rather than instigate, the learning process, one where they
take possession of learning through a combination of teachers’ guidance and their
own efforts. This is in contradistinction to the transmission model which produces a
culture of dependency blocking any possibility of autonomy while ensuring ‘good’
results. In the former, ownership takes place at the moment where the learner’s
interest appears self-generated, leading to initiative and resourcefulness, whether
individual or collaborative.
4/resistant: They were kind of giving me ideas of their own as well to help me come
up with ideas... So I made one idea, which I saw when I went further through the
park, next to the palm tree thing, that says ‘freezing’ while it is supposed to be in the
sun. I put a little sign that it says ‘freezing’. like a postcard.
In this project pupils were taken out of the gallery and school context into the local
environment where they were invited to make textual interventions in an attempt to
encourage audiences to see the familiar in unexpected ways. The artist suggested
using the accessible procedure of inversion where an expected characteristic is
replaced by its opposite. Although the resistant pupil acknowledged that the artist and
teacher initially gave him ideas, on reflection he claimed ownership of the inversion
for himself. By encouraging ownership, educators enable pupils to find some sense of
congruence between the curriculum and their interests; in effect they generate an
interest that might not occur without their intervention.
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